UN climate chief welcomes progress on design of Green Climate Fund

UN climate chief welcomes progress on design of Green Climate Fund

Bonn, 21 May 2014 – The United Nations climate chief today welcomed the progress made in the institutional design of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) at its final meeting in Songdo, Republic of Korea.

“It is most important that the board of the GCF agreed the key requirements that will serve as the backbone of how the fund will operate,” said Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

“The GCF will be a prime global channel to deliver public funds and to leverage private sector finance so that developing countries can build resilience against climate change and green their economies. There is now every reason to speedily mobilize the initial capitalization of the GCF, which should be at least $10 billion,” she said.

The Fund, agreed at the 2010 Conference of States Parties to the UNFCCC (held in Cancun), was designated as an operating entity of the financial mechanism of the Convention. It will aim to make a significant and ambitious contribution to the efforts towards attaining agreed international goals on combating climate change, including promoting a paradigm shift towards low-emission and climate-resilient development pathways by providing support to developing countries.

Ms. Figueres noted that the completion of the Fund’s institutional design and its initial resource mobilization can also provide new impetus towards a successful conclusion of a global climate change agreement in Paris in 2015.

It is also important, she said, that governments make full use of the fund by generating a pipeline of international joint initiatives that the GCF can finance. “The upcoming UN climate talks in Bonn (4–15 June) can push further forward in this direction,” said Ms. Figueres.